


Behind The Action

by watanuki_sama



Series: Shards Of Quantum Glass [14]
Category: Common Law (TV)
Genre: AU, Actor AU, Actor Travis, Assumptions, M/M, Misunderstandings, Stuntman Wes
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-07-16
Updated: 2019-07-16
Packaged: 2020-06-29 09:58:36
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,988
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19827775
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/watanuki_sama/pseuds/watanuki_sama
Summary: It starts when Travis is looking for the director and tries to get directions. Then Wes gives him a bloody nose.





	Behind The Action

**Author's Note:**

> Also posted on FF.net under the penname 'EFAW' on 07.15.19.
> 
> PROMPT: Actors

_“Both film and fashion are businesses where the audience doesn't feel or see the work that goes on behind the scenes.”_   
_—Tom Ford_

\---

The set isn’t that big, so directions like “The director is by the captain’s office,” should be easy enough to follow. And yet, Travis still ends up lost. Or, okay, not necessarily _lost_ , but definitely turned around, because this is not the captain’s office or the squad room or any other part of the police station set.

This set is a street, the kind that can become four different parts of the city depending on how it’s shot and framed. Good for when they can’t get on location, or when they need that gritty TV atmosphere reality just can’t provide. It’s familiar, he’s pretty sure he walked through this set on his way in, but that doesn’t mean anything when he’s _lost_. It’s not like he can ask the prop cars which direction to go.

That’s when a person steps out of a fake storefront. He’s in a suit, staring impatiently at his watch, but he could be dressed in a clown suit for all Travis cares. He’s just grateful there’s someone around.

“Hey,” he calls, jogging up. “Hi, excuse me.”

The blonde in the suit looks up, scowling. Travis immediately begins backpedaling, because clearly this guy is upset and Travis has made a habit of not pissing people off until _after_ all of his scenes have been shot.

And then the guy says, “It’s about damn time. I thought you weren’t ever going to get here.”

Travis pauses. “Um?” Unless Director Sutton is extremely young and good-looking, this isn’t him, which means blondie was expecting someone else. “I’m Travis.” Maybe introductions will clear this up.

“Yes, hi, I’m Wes.” Blondie checks his watch again. “Look, we only have five minutes before I need to be across set, so let’s just go through the grapple scene.”

“I don’t think…” Travis begins, but Wes is on a mission and doesn’t seem keen on stopping for little things like _facts_.

“It’s fine,” Wes declares, “We’ll work out the rest later. Come here.” Wes drags Travis across the set to a parked car.

“Okay,” Wes says, “chase, chase, chase, we end up here, and you grab me.”

Travis doesn’t remember his part having any chase scenes. “Um, are you sure I—” But then Wes grabs Travis’s arms and steps up close, and Travis always gets a little distracted when beautiful people are pressed up against him.

“So we struggle, struggle, struggle—” Wes fake struggles, which involves a lot of wriggling and doesn’t help Travis’s brain clear up any, “and then I slam you against the car.” Wes demonstrates, gently. “You’re dazed, you loosen your arms, and that’s when I headbutt you.”

That wakes Travis up fast enough. _“What?”_ His voice comes out shriller than he intended.

Wes shoots him an annoyed glower. “Oh, don’t be a baby. It’s not real, you know that.”

“Look, I really think—”

“We’ll do one run-through,” Wes barrels on, “real quick, from the top. And—action.”

And before Travis can finish a sentence, Wes is moving, grappling with Travis like this is a real fight. Travis, who has been in too many impromptu wrestling matches with his foster brothers, hangs on. By the time he realizes his mistake, Wes has already slammed him against the car. Hard.

Dazed is a good word for it. He loses most of his breath in a rush that sends his head spinning. As he’s trying to regain his equilibrium, he remembers what the next part of the plan is.

“Wait—!”

Too late. Wes slams his head back, and Travis sees stars.

\---

“This isn’t my fault.”

“In what _possible_ universe is that true?”

Wes is talking to the show’s legal advisor, Alex, on the other side of the wall where Travis is icing his nose. However, being a set wall, as in, connected to nothing with no roof, Travis can hear every word. Plus, they’re not exactly talking in hushed voices here.

Wes sounds defensive. “I told Dakota to send the replacement stuntman to the set when he arrived. This guy showed up. What was I supposed to think?”

“Oh, I don’t know, maybe you could say, ‘Who are you?’ or ‘You’re the stuntman, right?’ You know, just to make sure he’s actually the right person.” Alex speaks in a long-suffering tone of familiarity. Travis wonders how often Wes has injured innocent actors who just happened to get lost on set.

“He didn’t say he _wasn’t_ the replacement stuntman.” Oh yeah. Wes is definitely on the defense.

“Did you give him a chance? Or did you barrel on with that single-minded focus of yours?” The silence is long and heavy; Alex lets out a knowing huff. “That’s what I thought. You need to go apologize.”

“I didn’t do anything wrong!”

“You punched him in the face! We’re lucky he’s not going to charge you!”

There’s another pause, before Wes says, a little sulkily, “I headbutted him.”

“Because that makes it _so_ much better. Go apologize to him. Now.” Her heels click away. Travis smirks and thinks she sounds like an awesome woman to know.

After a minute, Wes comes around the corner, shoulders stiff and mouth set in a thin line. He stops in front of Travis, looking at a spot several inches above his head. “I’m sorry for headbutting you without making sure you were the person I should have been headbutting,” he says flatly.

Personally, Travis doesn’t think Wes sounds very sorry at all.

Travis lowers the ice, probing delicately at his nose. The bleeding has stopped, but it’s already tender and swollen to the touch. He might even get a couple of decent black eyes out of this.

“Man,” he whines, “this is my moneymaker.”

Wes’s eyes snap down to him, a look of horrified disbelief on his face. “What?”

He waves a hand. “I’m an _actor_ , dude. My face is how I get jobs. And you go and disfigure me.”

“The swelling will go down in a few days.”

“I have shooting _today.”_

Now Wes looks uncertain, just a little. “Who are you playing?”

“Michael.”

Wes’s face changes in an instant. He waves a dismissive hand. “A bit part. You’ll be fine.”

“Hey!”

“Whatever.” Wes checks his watch, mind already a thousand miles away. “I have to go, so sorry about your face and good luck, and stuff.” He turns and stalks away, striding across the set like he owns it.

Travis watches him go with a grin.

\---

Jonelle, in makeup, frowns at his face, tapping her chin thoughtfully. Travis sits very quietly under her scrutiny; after the tongue-lashing he got for daring to show up like this (whether it was his fault or not is, apparently incidental), he doesn’t want to get any more on her bad side than he is.

Finally, she nods. “We can make this work.”

\---

The show is called _Partners_. It’s a police procedural about Liza, the beautiful but emotionally distant detective, and her partner Warren, the charming but commitment phobic cop with a troubled past. It’s a recipe that’s been done a thousand times, but like all shows it has its own particular twist, something to make it stand out from the rest.

The twist on _Partners_ is that Liza and Warren are in couples’ counseling. Not because they’re a couple, but because their working relationship is so bad. Which is hilarious—Travis has read some of the group therapy scenes.

Travis plays Michael, Liza’s ex-husband, a well-meaning guy who gets in over his head more often than not, and still has a friendly, if nostalgic relationship with his ex. It’s _not_ a bit part, no matter what Wes says; Travis is in four of twelve episodes, he’s practically a main character.

His first scene takes place outside the police station. He slouches attractively against a parking sign, listening to the last-minute calls flying around the set. Ah, the familiar cacophony of show biz.

“And…action!”

Liza strolls down the steps, stopping abruptly when she sees Michael. He pushes off the sign, smiling at his ex. “Hey, Liza-bear.”

“What do you want, Michael? And what happened to your face?”

Michael rubs the back of his neck sheepishly. “I, uh, had a disagreement with some poker buddies. Not important.” He cocks his hips, tucks his thumbs in pockets, and gives her his most charming smile. “Can I borrow your car?”

Liza’s eyes narrow. “Are you in trouble again, Mikey?”

There, past the ad-libbing and onto the original scene, and they’re off.

It’s just over a dozen takes before Director Sutton is satisfied. As Travis is leaving the set, heading for the scrumptiously-laden catering cart, he spots Wes, standing off to the side of the cameras. Smirking, he veers towards the blonde. “See something you like?”

Wes just scowls and walks away without a word. Travis chuckles to himself.

\---

After Travis’s second scene of the day, he goes to the street set to watch Wes’s scene. Warren, chasing a fleeing suspect, runs through an alley, slides across the hood of a parked car, and darts across the street, where he’s surprised by the suspect. This leads to the grapple scene, and the headbutt, which leads to Liza dressing Warren down for injuring the guy. It’s not a long scene, and Wes, as the stunt double for the guy who plays Warren, gets to do most of the work.

Travis finds a spot to stand, out of the camera’s view, and watches.

He’s never really paid much attention to the stunt people unless they’re his own. Off-set, at least in his experience, actors tend to stay in one group and stunt people in the other.

Maybe, Travis thinks, watching Wes’s scene, that’s a mistake, because _wow_.

At the start of the scene, the suspect races out of the alley and darts across the street. A second later, Wes leaps out of the alley like a panther, sliding across the hood of the parked car like it’s greased. He sprints around another car, but the suspect is there to grab him, and they grapple.

The grapple scene, seen from outside the action, is like a violent but well-choreographed dance. Travis can appreciate it a lot more when his face isn’t on the receiving end.

The scene is less than a minute long, but Travis is enthralled. Wes and his co-stuntman break apart, and Travis watches Wes, seeing now all the lithe, lean grace coiled under that suit. He hadn’t noticed it before; now that he has, he can’t look away.

He stays to watch the rest of Wes’s takes—it’s not like he has anywhere else to be today. He is utterly, completely enthralled by the way Wes moves.

When the scene finally ends, Wes strolls by Travis with a smirk on his face. “See something you like?” he asks, mimicking Travis’s words from this morning.

_Yeah,_ Travis thinks, _yeah, I did_. But his throat is dry, and by the time he swallows enough to speak, Wes has already walked away.

\---

He tries to find Wes again before he leaves, maybe ask him out for drinks, but it’s like the guy has vanished into thin air. He asks a few people, but no one’s seen him. Until he gets to Jonelle.

“Good luck with that,” she scoffs, hefting her bag. “Wes doesn’t fraternize.”

Travis shifts guiltily. “I wasn’t going to _fraternize_.” A least, not the first day of shooting. “I was just thinking a friendly drink. He headbutted me in the nose.”

“Believe me, I _know_.” She gives him a skeptical look, fingers tapping the strap of her bag. “It doesn’t matter either way. Wes skipped out of here ten minutes ago.”

Travis throws his hands in the air. “You couldn’t just tell me that?”

“But it’s so fun to see you squirm,” she calls as he walks away.

“You’re a sadist, lady!” he shoots back with a roll of his eyes.

\---

Travis’s second episode has just one scene, and it takes less than an hour to shoot. Since he has absolutely nothing else to do today, and no one seems to mind, he wanders around set, watching people set up or practice their lines.

Travis finds Wes behind the makeup trailer, stretching. By which he means Wes is bent in half like Gumby, hands wrapped around his feet and nose to the ground. Travis has a sudden flash of what Wes could do with that sort of flexibility and he has to cough sharply to clear his mind.

“I already apologized for your nose,” Wes says from the ground, “and it’s been a week anyway. You shouldn’t be mad.”

“I’m not mad,” Travis promises, because he’s really not. He hasn’t been mad about that since it happened. (Once the swelling went down, he even thought it was funny.)

Wes turns his head—just his head—and peers up at him. Travis doesn’t know what Wes sees, but Wes sits up. And then he keeps going, leaning back, putting his hands flat on the ground by his head. He arches like a bow, and without hesitating, he flips his legs over his head, backflipping into a standing position. It’s elegant and sexy as sin and Travis would probably break his spine if he tried.

“You do gymnastics?” he asks, because that little act may had shorted out his brain a bit and that’s all he can come up with.

The blonde smirks, looking amused. “And yoga.”

Travis’s brain happily stutters to another lust-filled halt.

The other male shifts, hands on his hips. “If you’re not mad, then what do you want?”

“Uh…” Travis tries frantically to get his brain going again. Not easy, when Wes seems able to derail it with a twitch of his finger. “Do you eat?”

Wes is looking more and more amused. “Yes, Travis, I eat.”

“Good. Good. Um, do you want to? Eat? With me, I mean. Do you want to eat with me?”

The amusement shifts into something…guarded, almost. “I have to be on set in half an hour.”

“Then when you’re done? Or on your break, or…whenever? I’m flexible. I mean, not like you’re flexible, but…yeah.” Travis has no idea what’s happening here. He’s usually way more suave than this.

The blonde studies him, the corners of his mouth tugging down. “I don’t go out with coworkers.”

“Then it’s not a date.” Travis may be crushing like a hormone-ridden teenage boy, but he’s not pushing for anything Wes doesn’t want to give. He’s not that kind of guy. “We can go out as coworkers, or…friends, even.”

Wes’s mouth quirks back up. It’s a much better look than the scowl. “I don’t think we’re quite _friends,_ yet.”

“You did headbutt me in the face,” Travis points out. “I don’t let people I’m dating do that.”

The burst of laughter that comes out of Wes startles Travis—but in an awesome tingly sort of way. “That’s good,” the stuntman says, still chuckling. “You shouldn’t really let anyone do that.”

“Except a trained professional,” Travis says innocently, which makes Wes snicker again. “So what do you say? A not-date late lunch between coworkers?”

Amused and more relaxed than Travis has seen yet, Wes rocks back on his heels. “Yeah, I guess we could try that. Say, a couple hours to get through my scenes? I’ll meet you by the back entrance.”

Travis thinks his face is gonna split in half from his grin, and the teenage boy inside him is cheering. “That sounds great.”

\---

He’s been there almost forty minutes when he decides Wes isn’t coming. Which is fine, whatever, if Wes doesn’t want to go out, that’s fine. Travis just figured Wes would be the kind of person who would say no, not string a guy along.

Sighing, he trudges towards the parking lot. Well, that’s definitely a hint to Wes’s interest for sure.

“Travis! Hey, wait up!” Travis pauses as Kendall, one of the lighting techs, bounds up. “Hey, I’m glad I caught you.”

“What’s up?”

She jerks her thumb over her shoulder. “Wes’s scene ran long—he’s still shooting. He wanted me to give you a message, though. ‘Raincheck’.”

Travis’s bad mood immediately lifts. “What?”

“That’s the message. He said you’d know what it means.”

“Yeah, I know what it means. Thanks, Kendall.” He waves goodbye and heads to his bike with a spring in his step.

\---

Travis has dated coworkers before. It’s never been anything special—he’ll have chemistry with a costar and they’ll go out for as long as shooting lasts. He rarely has anything last beyond that.

Between acting gigs, Travis has perfected the art of one-night stands. He doesn’t want to date anyone who is with him simply because he’s been on TV and in a few movies, but he’s not above using his fame to score. They get to say they’ve slept with someone semi-famous, and he gets to scratch an itch. Win-win all around.

It’s different with Wes. Travis knows his own signs when he wants a quick thing until they wrap, and he exhibits none of them with Wes. Maybe it’s just because their first meeting involved misunderstandings and accidental violence (that’s the stuff relationships are made of—Travis has starred in enough B-list rom-coms to know).

He barely knows anything about the guy. Wes does yoga, and gymnastics. His blonde is natural and not from a bottle. He rarely eats from the catering cart, and when he does he always picks boring things like turkey sandwiches and fruit salad. He seems fairly close to Jonelle and Kendall, as he’s typically hanging out by the makeup trailers or lighting guys between scenes. Beyond that, Travis has got nothing, but that’s not a huge deterrent. Travis has gone out with tons of people he knows less about.

The difference here is that Travis _wants_ to learn more about Wes. He wants to go out with Wes and find out his favorite color and what foods he hates and how he takes his coffee.

Sure, he also wants to find out just how bendy Wes is and how his athleticism contributes to his stamina, but for once it’s not _just_ about sex. Travis is genuinely intrigued by Wes. That doesn’t happen often.

Oh, it’s not like he wants to do anything too deep with Wes, because Travis isn’t a huge fan of long-term relationships. They just get messy and hard to handle. But he definitely wants more than just a one-night stand, too.

Before he can even think about what he wants, though, he has to actually get Wes’s attention for more than five minutes.

Well, that shouldn’t be too hard. Attention is something Travis knows how to get.

\---

Travis’s third episode is number seven, the dog episode. Liza and Warren take temporary custody of their injured coworker’s K-9 dog, and Liza opens up a little to the animal. Liza and Michael also have a couple of bittersweet, emotional scenes together. It’s a great episode, and the star of the show is the dog. His name is Hudson and by the second day Travis has decided he’s going to steal the dog for himself.

“You absolutely are not,” the dog’s handler, Randi, declares, crossing her arms. But the corners of her mouth are twitching up, so he knows that she knows he’s just teasing.

“I absolutely am.” He vigorously rubs Hudson’s ears and gets a faceful of sloppy kisses in return. “Look at this, he loves me.”

“He loves anyone who smells like food, and you have BBQ sauce on your shirt.”

Travis checks his shirt, and Randi takes the opportunity to call Hudson to her. Hudson, of course, goes. “That’s playing dirty,” he sulks, pulling himself to his feet. “Cheater.”

She sticks her tongue out and walks away, Hudson trotting faithfully on her heels. The loss of the loveable dog is tempered by the sight of Wes’s approaching giving the dog and his handler a wide berth.

“You don’t like dogs?” Travis teases as Wes stops in front of him.

The blonde’s face twists. “Not particularly, no.”

Travis gasps dramatically, clutching his chest. “What? How could you not like _dogs?_ They’re faithful, loyal, and _amazing_.”

“If you died in your sleep, that faithful, loyal animal would eat your face.”

“…you say that like it’s a _bad_ thing.” Wes’s nose scrunches up adorably, and Travis laughs. “Anyway, what’s up?”

The blonde goes from self-confident to slightly awkward in an instant. “Well,” he declares, rubbing the back of his neck. “About that raincheck… If you’re free tonight…”

Wes looks so awkwardly flustered that Travis totally forgives Wes for not liking dogs. “Yeah, I’m free tonight. Meet you in the back lot at 5:30?”

“Make it six and we’re good.” They shake on it, then Wes gets called away. Travis hums on his way to the makeup trailer.

\---

He’s done with his scenes by four. He spends some time watching the current scene being shot, but there’s only so many times he can watch the actors flub the same conversation before he gets tired of it. He looks for Wes, but Wes is busy practicing for his last scene and can’t talk. Kendall is running around like a chicken with her head cut off, Jonelle only gives him half an hour before she kicks him out, and Hudson is on set so Travis can’t play with the dog. He ends up at the catering cart, trying a little bit of everything in sight.

Travis eats until he thinks he might explode, and he hopes that Wes doesn’t want to get food with their drinks, because seriously, _boom!_ He figures he might as well head over, see how close Wes is to being wrapped up, so he wanders through the sets, looking for the stuntman.

He finds Wes. He finds him with Alex, in a shadowed corner of the set. They’re tucked up close together; she’s got a hand on his arm, and he’s smiling at her, and they’re standing way too close to be mere colleagues.

Travis can’t tell what their conversation is about, but it doesn’t really matter. He can see enough from here. Even as he watches, Alex leans up and presses a gentle, intimate kiss to his cheek.

Travis turns away, feeling cold and humiliated and angry with himself. How _stupid_.

\---

“Travis. Hey, Travis, wait up!”

Travis grits his teeth, clutching the handle of his bike, but he obligingly waits for Wes to catch up. The anger burns hot, low in his belly, and he can’t decide what he’d rather do; punch Wes in the face or just drive fast and far.

The blonde trots to a halt by Travis’s bike. “Hey. I thought we were going out. Raincheck, remember?”

Wes sounds innocently puzzled, and it just pisses Travis off more. “Something came up,” he snaps, starting the bike.

“Travis?” A hand rests on his forearm. “What’s wrong?”

Travis shrugs Wes’s hand off. “Oh, like you don’t know.”

“I _don’t_.”

“Yeah right.” Travis pulls out his helmet, not looking at the other man. “I mean, you had to know I was interested in you. I wasn’t being _subtle_ or anything. So I would have appreciated it if you’d have just shot me down instead of stringing me along.”

“Why would I have shot you down?” Wes asks, still sounding completely confused, which means Wes was at least a little interested, which means—

“Oh, fuck _that_.” Travis turns a venomous glower on Wes. “I don’t know what the hell it is about me that makes people think I’d be okay with cheating, but I’m _not_. And fuck you for thinking it too.”

The other man takes a startled step back eyes wide. “Cheating? Travis, what are you _talking_ about?”

“Leave me the fuck alone, Wes.” Travis jams his helmet on and takes off before Wes can say anything else.

\---

After two fights and a passionate one-night stand, Travis is (mostly) over it. He thinks if he never sees Wes again, it’ll be too soon.

Unfortunately, he still has one more episode to shoot.

In this one, Michael gets in trouble and goes to Liza and Warren for help. Michael gets roughed up a little, a gang of gun runners is arrested, and Michael and Liza have a few good emotional scenes together. It’s also the episode where Travis is in more than five minutes, so that was exciting from the start. Now, the thought of spending so much time on set both makes him nauseous and pisses him off.

Because Travis is in so much of this episode, he and Wes end up on set together a lot. Not necessarily in the same scenes, but they’re still in proximity, and the tension is obvious to everyone.

“So what’s up with you and Wes?” Jonelle asks his third day of shooting. She’s got him flat on his back, applying a ring of bruises around his neck, and he can’t really get away. “Kendall says she got frostbite standing between you two.”

“It’s nothing,” he grumbles, even as he feels the anger flare up again.

“Uh-huh,” she hums disbelievingly. “Every other time you’ve been in here, all you’d talk about is Wes, and this time you haven’t said a word. But sure, it’s _nothing_.”

“He’s an asshole and I’m over him,” Travis snaps, digging his fingers into his thighs. “Are you almost done?”

Jonelle steps back, crosses her arms, and stares steadily at him.

“Oh, come on! I have to be on set in like ten minutes!”

“Then you’d better start talking.”

He narrows his eyes at her. “Why’s it matter to you?”

“Because you’re an entertaining source of gossip.” She rolls her eyes. “And because it’s causing tension on set. Frostbite, remember? So spill.”

Travis doesn’t really want to aid the crew’s gossip mill, but everything is bubbling too close to the surface, ready to explode at the slightest opening. An opening Jonelle has just given him. He spills it all.

Jonelle works on his neck silently, for once, no biting remarks adding color commentary. It’s a surprisingly good deterrent—without her sharp comments goading him on, he runs out of vitriol sooner rather than later.

Jonelle works on him a few minutes longer, face inscrutable. Finally, she steps back, sitting him up with a sigh. “You probably get this a lot,” she declares, leaning back against the counter, “but you’re an idiot.”

He stiffens in outrage. “Hey!”

“Just shut up and listen.” Nice and succinct, she tells him what he needs to know.

She’s right. He is an idiot.

\---

Wes is in the squad room set, perched on the edge of a desk talking to Amy. He ignores Travis completely when he walks up—Amy is the one who discreetly coughs and points. When Wes finally turns around, there’s a look of such bored apathy on his face that Travis feels about three inches tall.

Travis shoves his hands in his pockets and tries not to hunch his shoulders. “Hey, uh…can we talk?”

“Sure.” The bored look on Wes’s face is clearly a front, because there’s enough ice in Wes’s voice to make it snow. “Talk.”

Amy quietly slides away. Travis kind of wishes he could do the same.

Travis takes a breath. This was easier in his changing room, before he was faced with the blonde’s ire. But no one will ever say Travis is a coward.

“I’m sorry.” Wes is utterly unmoved by this, and Travis bravely continues. “I saw you and Alex together, and I didn’t know you two were, you know, divorced, and I made some assumptions I shouldn’t have.”

Wes is silent, staring stonily at him so long Travis starts fidgeting. “I’m sorry,” he says again, even though the repetition falls flat.

A vein in Wes’s jaw pulses. “You know, I don’t know what pisses me off more. That you just assumed I’d be the sort to cheat on someone I was with, or that you thought that half-assed apology was enough to placate me.”

Travis rears back, stung. “I—I’m not trying to placate you. And it wasn’t half-assed!”

Wes just smiles, thin and sharp as a razor. “Fuck you.” He slides off the desk. “And leave me the fuck alone, Travis.”

He stalks away, leaving Travis standing in in the middle of the set, and his own words seem harsher than ever thrown back in his face.

\---

Travis is professional enough to keep his problems with Wes off the screen. He keeps his distance from the stuntman and gets through his lines and spends most of his time between scenes at the catering cart, eating his feelings. He can take a hint. He’s an _adult_ , he can get through this.

Still, by the end of the shoot, Travis is ready to be _gone_. He says his goodbyes and is halfway through the door almost before the cameras had stopped rolling.

It’s fine, you know? It wasn’t like he was really _that_ interested in Wes, and he has a date with one of the set assistants next week, so it doesn’t matter.

He ignores the cold knot of disappointment in his belly. It doesn’t mean anything at all.

“Marks!”

Travis pauses, one leg slung over his bike, and watches Director Sutton trot to a halt beside him. The older man pauses to catch his breath. Travis waits politely.

Travis likes Sutton. He’s worked with awesome directors and crappy directors, and Sutton is definitely leaning towards the awesome end of the scale. He’s very zen, and he has a big thing for meditation and positive affirmations and standing in circles holding hands, but he knows his stuff, and he definitely knows how to direct a crowd.

Sutton is a good guy. Travis really wouldn’t mind working with him again.

“What’s up, sir?”

The other man straightens, hands on his hips. “Are you planning to come to the wrap party?”

The end of season wrap party won’t be for another couple of weeks, after the last episode is done. But more than that…

“Am I invited? I’m not a main character.”

The director gives him a small, amused look. “It’s a twelve-episode season and you’re in four of them. You’re close enough to count.”

On the one hand, the wrap party would mean seeing Wes and being faced with his mistakes yet again. On the other hand, the party would be a chance to say goodbye to everyone else, and it would probably be catered, too. Travis fucking loves that catering cart.

He can easily avoid Wes for the duration of the party, no problem.

“Sure,” he grins, “send me the place and time and I’ll be there.”

\---

The next two weeks suck. The date with the set assistant falls flat, and they don’t even sleep together. He gets a speeding ticket, and then his bike gets impounded when he parks too close to a fire hydrant. And _then_ he gets a call from his agent saying he didn’t get a part he’d auditioned for.

And through it all, he can’t stop thinking about Wes.

\---

They hold the wrap party on set, because why the hell not. He arrives late, missing what Kendall assures him was a very moving speech by Director Sutton, and the party is already hopping. The event is indeed catered, the booze is flowing, and everyone is in a giddy, post-season mood.

Travis looks for Wes and doesn’t know whether to be relieved or disappointed when he doesn’t see him.

An hour passes, and Travis is already three sheets to the wind. He hugs Amy in front of her girlfriend, vomits in a garbage can, and loudly proclaims that if the network doesn’t renew _Partners_ , they’ll regret it.

“I’m sure they will,” Jonelle says, rolling her eyes. She grabs one of his arms and slings it over her shoulder. “Maybe next time lay off the alcohol until _after_ you’ve eaten something a little more substantial, alright?”

“You’re really pretty,” Travis slurs, “and very scary. I think you’d beat me up if I tried anything.”

“You wouldn’t be wrong,” she says, then rolls her eyes so hard Travis’s head spins. “Boys,” she scoffs under her breath, dumping him on his ass. She pushes a bottle of water into his hands, commands him to drink all of it, and leaves him to his lonesome.

It takes him a second to recognize where he is, and when he does he groans. It’s the street set, where he met Wes.

“He headbutted me here,” Travis tells the prop car in front of him. “ ‘s the stuff rom-coms are made of.”

Except if this was a rom-com, their little misunderstanding would already be in the laughing-about-it stage and they’d be halfway in love. 

He thumps his head against the fake wall and sighs. “The movies lied to me,” he groans. “It’s all just a big fat lie.”

“Are you surprised?” a familiar vice asks. “You are an actor.”

Travis blinks blearily at the figure looming over him, and he’s too drunk to think it’s weird Wes is here. “Hey man, pull up a seat.”

Wes does, lowering himself with a lack of grace that suggests he may have indulged in the alcoholic drinks too. Not as drunk as Travis, probably, but Travis is hard to beat.

“ ‘m sorry,” he mumbles, staring at the water bottle. He’s not quite sure if his fingers will do what he wants in order to get it open. “I was a jerk.”

There’s a sigh at his side. “I was a jerk too. So…I’m sorry too.”

The words sound like they’re being torn out of Wes. It makes Travis chuckle. “God, you’re weird.” He lists to the side, slumping against Wes’s shoulder. “I really do like you.”

There’s a beat of silence to his left. “I get too focused on one thing and don’t listen to other people,” Wes admits.

Travis chuckles again. “I know. You headbutted me in the face.”

“I can be petty.”

“I jump to assumptions at the drop of a hat,” Travis counters. “I still like you. You’re very bendy.”

Wes snorts, some of the tension easing out of his shoulders, so it no longer feels like Travis is leaning against a brick wall.

They sit in silence for a few more minutes before Travis sighs. “This is the wrap party.”

“Yes,” Wes agrees. “So?”

“So.” He blinks blearily across the set. “So I missed my chance. Pissed you off and you didn’t go out with me. Now we’re all done.”

There’s a huff of laughter over the top of his head. “Now who’s the weird one? Some people have relationships beyond the length of filming.”

Travis furrows his brow. “No way.”

“Yes way.”

“Well.” Travis sits up, blinking at the blonde. “In that case. Wanna go out for drinks?”

The stuntman smiles crookedly. “Neither of us need more alcohol. Raincheck.”

“Sure.” Travis slumps back against Wes’s side, closing his eyes. “That sounds good.”

\---

He wakes up under a desk in the squad room set. Judging by the groans around him, there are quite a few others from the party, equally hungover, who never made it home.

Travis groans, running his hands over his face. Good thing he doesn’t have any auditions to do today. There isn’t enough aspirin and coverup in the world to make him presentable if he looks as shitty as he feels.

He sighs, slowly sitting up and fortifying himself for the arduous task of standing upright and being human. He can’t lounge around on set _all_ day long.

Then he pauses as something on the back of his hand catches his eye. It takes a few seconds to focus enough to read the writing, but when he does, he grins, suddenly feeling _much_ better.

Someone wrote in blue ink seven numbers and a single word.

_Raincheck_.

**Author's Note:**

> Liza J. Bennett is the actress who plays Amy in the show. Michael and Warren, of course, reference Michael Ealy and Warren Kole. _Partners_ is a clear rip-off of _Common Law_ haha I have no shame.


End file.
